Ever wonder how the best salespeople engage their internal executives to help close deals? We're not talking about bringing a sales manager on to be a super closer...we're talking about mobilizing the executive team to help your team win winnable deals that might otherwise be in jeopardy.
If your team doesn't have a process and training around this topic in place, it's a great way to kick off 2024!
Ever wonder how the best salespeople engage their internal executives to help close deals? We're not talking about bringing a sales manager on to be a super closer...we're talking about mobilizing the executive team to help your team win winnable deals that might otherwise be in jeopardy.
If your team doesn't have a process and training around this topic in place, it's a great way to kick off 2024!
Welcome to the sales management podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm co founder, corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads. Let's go my guest today. This is going to be a fun one. I was talking to Alice Hyman on LinkedIn and we came up with the topic and we said look, we have to do this. Today we're going to talk about how to position your internal executives inside of deals, how to prep them, how to get the most out of them and some of the things that might go wrong as you're working with those folks as a teammate to drive deals forward. Alice has a ton of experience in this world. She knows really interesting tactics and strategies around it. Alice, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I cannot wait to dive into this topic because it's something I talked to CEOs about weekly, right, and I always say, corey, that the CEO will always have a role in sales, but that role will change as the company matures. So I know a lot of CEOs just want to like get higher sales executive or a higher VP of sales or a CRO and just back out of sales, completely right. Yeah that's just not reality, right? It can't work like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got to stay involved because there's going to be those customers that are used to that access, or that access might push the deal over the finish line. So let's start with this Before we start getting into how to get them involved. What are some of the types of deals where a CEO should be involved?
Speaker 2:Okay. So that is something that each company needs to determine, right? So think about current customers who are already buying from you and, within that, describe which clients would have access to what senior executives, when and why. Then, for prospects, same thing. So we're working on these really big deals with huge companies that we really want to land. Think about which of those prospects should have your senior executive involvement, when and how and that might be different for every company, but I'm going to give you some ideas of a few times when it's probably, oh, hell yes, they need to be involved, right. So the hell yeses are it's a brand that everybody knows and if we land it, we can leverage it.
Speaker 1:Got it, so it's got network effects. It's not just this deal, it's going to bring us more deals.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And if you've already landed them, then the senior executives at their company deserve to have that high level connection with your executives. So even if you didn't have that coming in before you close the deal, the minute it's closed, you want to start positioning your senior executives with their senior executives to get it really sticky. And then when people move on to the next company, your main contacts have moved on or they get into another department and you have no contacts anymore. Someone at a higher level can reconnect and say, hey, seems like your company's growing and things are happening and we need to get connected with the right people again. Can you help me know who my people should be talking to? Right?
Speaker 2:So we're never, like what people say, ghosted by the people who are actually our customers, which, believe or not, it happens, but it happens for a reason usually that we just don't know. So having those higher level connections are important to maintain that right. But then also, when things go right senior executive to senior executive you want to remind them how right it went. When things go wrong, you want to have the senior executives jump on it and say, yeah, listen, our teams are working on this, Don't worry about it, we got it, but we just wanted to be proactive and let you know and those senior executives can sometimes get introductions into other parts of the company you're not in yet that you as the seller or customer success person cannot. So one other great reason to have senior executives involved is just simply to say thank you, to reach out to the customers at the highest level and just simply say thank you for your business and compliment their teams on the work that you've been doing together. So that pretty well covers customers, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it builds the relationship, you stay on their radar and you mitigate the risk that some folks leave. And then, yeah, the other piece is that if the salesperson, the account executive, reaches out to folks, they know what they're doing. They're trying to sell more stuff and it might come across that way and maybe those folks don't have as deep of understanding of the business and how the two organizations are partnered together. Maybe they do, but it's just because of their title. They don't have as much credibility or power in the eyes of that customer.
Speaker 2:Well, corey, think about this. So you have a super important customer that's somewhere between 20 and 50% of your revenue and something goes wrong, and then you have to have the senior executive reach out and they had no prior relationship, yeah, and you never want to be in that position. Never want to be in that position. So you want to be proactive about introducing your senior executives, and specifically your CEO, when it's warranted, right? So that's why I said when and how. You have to decide in your own company.
Speaker 2:Well, if they're a tier one customer and their senior executives are involved, we absolutely need our senior executives involved, right, right? When they're a tier one customer and none of their senior executives involved, oh, how are we going to get them involved? We'll send our senior executives out to do that, right? So you've got to make those checkboxes for your own company and decide. So I think, when it's a customer, what we always want to do is be in a good position to handle what may ever come next and not be in a position where the CEO is having to call to apologize and, not knowing that person, it's their first call to them. That's awful. No one wants to do that right.
Speaker 2:So it also mitigates risk, like you mentioned, not just risk of people leaving, but if you're in that $20 to $100 million range as a company selling business to business, to companies 100 to 1000 times your size, so they're billions, you know, and you're not even 100 million yet, there is a lot of risk there that needs to be mitigated. Like who are these people? Will this stay in business? Can they take our payment terms? Are they going to be able to support us? Having that CEO confidence call makes a big difference, especially on the prospecting end of it. So once you've already closed it, you've got that established, you further establish it. But now go to the prospecting side of things Again.
Speaker 2:Large companies with names we all recognize that we hope to not just do business with but partner on into the future. Get the senior executives involved early again, mitigating the risk, the risk and giving that confidence right that only a CEO can give. And so those times, the salesperson, the selling team which today it's usually a selling team You've got a salesperson ring leading, you've got a sales engineer of some type possibly, or a subject matter expert You're bringing customer success now in fairly early. So we have a very smooth handoff and good onboarding right. So great, get the senior executives involved early. But it has to be appropriate. It's not just like oh hey, listen, our CEO wants to meet your CEO, so get them on the line. Yeah, I was not going to work right. There has to be a valid business reason for getting these senior executives together.
Speaker 1:What's a good example of a valid business reason during the sales process that you've seen?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say, especially when it's the case where I was saying you're under $100 million, you're selling to a multimillion or billion dollar company, the risk mitigation. So I might say I'd love to get your GM, because if I'm selling to Ford Motor Company, it's unlikely that my company, even though I'm a CEO, that their CEO is going to talk to me. That's just unlikely, right? But there's somebody at a pretty high level, a general manager of that division or group that we're working with, that's going to benefit from our product or service. That does care, right? So I might say to the buying team, my selling team we're on a meeting, listen, it's really important to our CEO to understand your vision for this project you're working on, we're going to supply materials or services for We'd like to get our CEO on the phone with your GM to share the vision and get a better understanding at a much higher level.
Speaker 2:What's the best way to do that? Yes, and that's the kind of question that you ask, and that is partly because you do want to really understand the vision at a higher level and you want to mitigate the risk. You want, from senior executive to senior executive, for there to be confidence and that's how you can do it. Sometimes the founder is simply the person who knows the most, and so they are your star subject matter expert, and so when they ask you certain questions or you start to see them going a certain direction, say you know, the person who knows that best at our company is our founder. Let's get some of your senior execs on the line and bring our founder in and have that higher level of discussion together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So a couple of questions. One is which executive should participate in this activity?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in today's world, in the business to business complex sale, you know where we live most of the time and this doesn't really apply in other situations. It might apply, but it definitely applies here. I'm not going to expand it out to anywhere else, but I can tell you in that business to business complex sale there should never anymore be a time where you're getting close to closing, where there aren't more people involved than just a seller Right. That doesn't bring confidence and I guarantee you the team, the competitors team, selling against you, has brought in subject matter experts, has brought in customer success, has brought in their senior executives. So if you've got lone wolf selling still going on, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1:So you might be the best product, but you might be creating some perceived risk because you've got one salesperson that's really good, but the selling team at the other organization isn't selling this confidence around onboarding, adoption, longevity and all these other things.
Speaker 2:Exactly Because why we don't just want customers, we want successful customers. Why? Because that's what the customer wants. They want to be successful using your product or service. They want to buy something and get a return on investment. They want it to make their life better in some way. They want to make their own customers' lives better in some way. So unless we're all about that, we're not winning anymore. And when we have one salesperson out there against a team of sellers at the competitor, what do you want to do? You want to work with a team of people who are good for you, or this one person? You're not as good, but where's the team?
Speaker 1:And the interesting thing there is sometimes I see salespeople hear that and then they want to bring in their manager, the sales manager, and my guidance there is. I say look, that's risky because they're perceived as the super closer. If you're a customer, would you rather hear from the VP of product, the VP of customer success, the founder or a sales manager?
Speaker 2:So early on in the buyer's journey. As a seller who is an orchestrator because that is truly, that is truly the role of a seller today you are orchestrating all the pieces to help your customer get the information they need, get insights they need and make the very best decision. Now, hopefully, you're talking to the right people, so that decision would be to buy from you. But sometimes the very best decision is for them to do it internally, for them to buy from someone else, because you don't really exactly provide what they need right and we don't wanna custom out stuff that you know. Our engineers hate it when sellers sell stuff that we don't have right, so let's not do that.
Speaker 2:So, at the beginning, as we're trying to help them discover what's best for them, and we're orchestrating, we want to start to position our players with their players. It's like a game of chess, right? So if I have a pawn, you know, if they have a pawn, I need a pawn to put against their pawn. If they have a queen, oh, I better go get a queen to position against their queen, because I am no strength for a queen. If I'm a pawn, right, well, sometimes I am, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:It's tough Most of the time.
Speaker 2:the queen's gonna get me.
Speaker 1:I play a lot of chess. I want the queen.
Speaker 2:You want the queen, right? So what happens is, as the orchestrator, the seller in charge of this whole process, I go oh wow, they're bringing in their queen. Let me see who can match that queen. Oh, this subject matter expert will be able to answer her questions. So let's get this person in. It's not necessarily go get your sales manager. Sometimes it's your VP of sales, like you said.
Speaker 2:Vp of product could be a quality person, could be really important, like, get your extended team involved because you've got all these really smart people that can talk to other smart people and it's a way for you to get it stickier, right? So if you're asking me questions and I'm like, wow, you know our quality person would better answer those, let's get our quality people together. We'll just be there listening and let's have them talk and let's see what they need so we can provide that right. So I need to position the right people at the right time. It's not always a senior executive, and what I never, never wanna do is bring my CEO or a senior executive in to talk to lower level people unless their manager is there, okay.
Speaker 2:So if I'm just talking to the engineers and there's no VP of engineering there, I'm not gonna bring in my VP of engineering or my VP of product or my right. I gotta be careful. I gotta match like levels. Now there may be an exception to that when, let's say, your VP of product is the only one who can explain something and these engineers need to know it. Yes, of course, bring them in, but I would still ask them well, listen, our VP of products is gonna come. Can you get the VP of engineering on the line with your engineers?
Speaker 1:Well, and if they say no, that sends a signal to us, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, it could be a signal, or it could just be that the person's busy, but we always have to give them a valid reason, right? Oh hey, can you just get your boss on the line? It's not a valid reason, right? I'm sure that our VP of product will have questions for your VP of engineering, so it would be best if that person could be on the line.
Speaker 1:So when we're sending executives into meetings like this, how do we prep them? What are ways that it goes right? What are ways that it goes wrong?
Speaker 2:So it's gonna go better if your company establishes some guidelines around when to bring others into a deal right when it's they're a prospect and when to bring people in when it's a customer. So let's have some written guidelines. Let's just start there, because it's not gonna go well if you don't have that, because it's always gonna be case by case.
Speaker 1:It's funny, alice, because you're the I think you're the fifth CEO I've talked to in the last two weeks on my podcast and everyone is just pounding the table around writing down the process, writing down the guidelines. It seems to be a lost art.
Speaker 2:I think it is, and it's really creating problems for these companies that are trying to scale. Everything can't live in my head right, because then my team can't do their job. So what I do every time I'm training somebody to do anything is I make them write it down, and then I review it and make sure it's right, and then it becomes a process, and then those processes are used and reviewed because it's in progress always. A process is always in progress because things change. So we have to make sure that we can keep updating these, but we do have to start by writing them down.
Speaker 1:I love how you said have them write it down, because then that helps you understand what's in there. Do they actually understand what they're doing or not?
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%, if I write it down. They have. No, they right, that doesn't work. They have to write it down. Then I review it with them, then we train everybody else on it who needs the training on it right. So it's a very simple process and it saves so much time and frustration when we do it that way. So and the other cool thing is, once you've done that, then you can do a video explaining the process right and get that out to everybody, even if they can't be there alive. So there's just so many benefits to teaching people how to do things, having them write it down, checking it over and then training everyone on it.
Speaker 2:So that's what I would suggest with this as well. It's like so when and how do you use a senior executive? During a sales process or a buyer's journey? When and how do you use that? Okay, it could be anywhere, it just depends right. So maybe at the very beginning of the sales process, you need a senior executive to give some confidence. So maybe there's a video of your senior executive introducing themselves and telling them why they're excited about the possibility of working together.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool so that way how simple is that.
Speaker 1:It's not a bunch of 30 minute meetings on their calendar, it's a minute or two minutes of them from the heart actually saying here's why I think our company could be a fit for your company and discussing something very specific.
Speaker 2:So your VP of sales could do that, your head engineer could do it, your CEO could do it a CFO but the point is it's who are we talking to? Pick the best person to talk to them? I'm early in the sales cycle, but I my CEO has learned that I'm working on a deal with Coca-Cola and they're like oh, I've always dreamed of working with Coca-Cola as a kid. It was my favorite. So pick up your the CEO, hey. Or if you have a fancy team that can help the CEO, that's great. If you don't, it's like. I heard from Alice today that there's a chance that we might get to work with Coca-Cola. I just have to say I'm so excited about it. I'm a big fan. I really believe that we have some solutions that will be helpful, but I'll leave that to you and the sales person to work out. However, if you do need to reach me, right, yeah that is a good touch.
Speaker 1:It's a positive touch.
Speaker 2:That's not even a whole minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they get some confidence right. Love it. And I'll tell you, if you use something like Vidyard, I'll give my friends a Vidyard a plug. But there's tons of other ones out there Dub, hippo Video, loom. You know One Mob, you name it right. If you use that, then you'll know whether they watch the video or not. Plus, you'll know if that video goes viral, because it will show you how many people watch the video and for how long, and I have seen that work so well. Oh my gosh, their CEO made us a video.
Speaker 1:Whoa, oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:That's a great role for a CEO to play. So you know back to you know how and when do we do this. So we need to think of the situations that we actually have in the buyer's journey and we need to match up what experience we want them to have and pull in the right people for each of those experiences. And then, once we have talked about that and kind of know when those times are, it's easy for the sellers to go to their sales leader and say look, I want the VP of engineering on this call in two weeks it's daytime place right. Here's the role I want the VP of engineering to play on this call. Right. Here is who they will meet. And here is what I expect as a result of that VP spending their valuable time with my client at this point in their journey. Now the sales litter goes wow, that sounds great. Yes, let's take this to the VP of Engineering and give them the deeds and see what they say. The VP of Engineering will say that's great. Then the next thing that should come out of their mouth is when is our prep call Right? So when are we going to prepare? So that's great. They say yes, because you've given them the information they need. Remember these three things what role do you want me to play? Who am I going to meet? What is the result you're expecting from having me spend my time doing this? If you can answer those three things, they can decide whether it's worth their time or not. Or they might say but you know who would be even better, let's go get VP of whatever. So they have that opportunity.
Speaker 2:Now the salesperson has to do that enough ahead of time to have a planning meeting. Now sometimes meetings go fast, right, when a prospect is hot and they want to move, you got to move. So you can't say blanket oh, it's got to be two weeks in advance. Hey, listen, we have a great opportunity here. It's in two days from now. I need you to say yes or no today and I need to have a meeting with you tomorrow to prep you.
Speaker 2:That happens sometimes. So hey, senior executives, be flexible. But most of the time you'll have notice, because nobody moves that fast these days. It's just crazy how slow things go. But then you have a meeting and the salesperson comes prepared. They should have their call plan ready to share, and I don't care if you use the Miller-Hyman green sheet call planning method, or if you use any other call planning method out there, or if you write it on the back of a napkin. Tell me who we're going to meet, why they want to meet with us, what the objective is from their point of view, what the objective is from our point of view, what questions you're going to ask, what are our unique strengths, where are we and what needs to happen next. Lay it out for me.
Speaker 2:So that right, pretty simple and like you can do it on the back of a napkin. Then, as a senior executive, I can ask you questions. Okay, so you said these people are going to be on the call. What are they most interested in? Why do they care? Who else are they talking to? I can ask you anything I need to know, and then you can say to me now listen, what I want you to do is ask this question and how you'll know when to ask, is I'm going to say, oh gosh, I want to turn it over to Jim for a minute and Jim's going to go. Yeah, I do have a question. Blah, blah, right. So you got to practice people, it's orchestrated.
Speaker 2:Out there winging it. We got to orchestrate, and that's the seller's job, as I said earlier orchestrate it. So now I've got a hard yes from the senior executive. They're excited, they can't wait, they want to get on that call. I have prepped them and now we have the meeting and if we're slacking behind the scenes I can say, oh, that was good, say this, ask that. So we have our little communication in the background ready to go and we just keep our eye on the camera and talk with them. Or maybe, my goodness, these days maybe we're actually in person with them how exciting. Or maybe it's just a phone call and that's fine too.
Speaker 2:But we have our communication method and I teach sellers and senior teams to learn how to toss the ball back and forth and literally I use a ball sometimes. Right, yeah, ok, so Susan's going to ask. And then we're going to be quiet and we're going to wait for them to answer. So thus the golden silence that we talk about in conceptual selling. If you haven't read that book, my father wrote it, steve Hyman, look it up conceptual selling. And then, after it's quiet and they answer, we're going to wait again, I'm going to toss the ball to Ken and Ken's going to ask, and then when Ken finishes, he wants our VP to chime in. You know Bob, so he's going to toss the ball to Bob, and tossing the ball can be verbal, corey. I think you'd be the best person to explain that Go.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So I don't have to feel the pressure to do all the talking and I get everybody involved. And I might say to one of the buyers that I know best hey, claire, who do you think is the best person on your team to answer that? And then, instead of Claire answering because she's kind of ahead of the buying team, she'll be like oh, I think Susan should answer that. So learn how to toss the ball Right. So if you want senior executives on your call, you've got to help them know what to do. And I can have salespeople who are scared to death to put their CEO or senior executive on because why, corey, they go rogue Right.
Speaker 1:They're the mad scientist.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, you know. They're just so unpredictable. I never know what they're going to do, so I can't put them on a call. Well, whose fault is it that they're unpredictable? You didn't prepare them. You didn't teach them what you were going to do and how you were going to toss the ball to them.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's fascinating. I know this depends, but it seems like there's as much, if not more, prep than there is actual execution in some of these meetings.
Speaker 2:Well, when it's important enough, there should be, and I'll tell you that companies lengthen their own sales cycle because they do not spend the time preparing. So it's a little bit of that slowdown to speed up. You want your sales cycle to move along. Then you prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts on reporting on or requiring a certain amount of time that executives are spending in these types of meetings? So I don't want to call it a quota, but maybe it's a quota. Executive leadership team, we expect 10% of your time every month to be spent with prospects and customers. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2:I think it's a great thing. I think that we need to set an expectation for what we expect senior executives to do. That's the CEO's job, and then we need to measure it. So a lot of people do win-loss reviews right and I'm not talking about win-loss analysis now the third party does. Those are fantastic also, but just your review of what you won and what you lost. If you go down the line of the things you lost, I bet there weren't the right people involved.
Speaker 1:Oh interesting.
Speaker 2:So if you go down the line of what you won, I bet there was a senior executive, a subject matter expert and some other people besides a seller involved. It's a real easy way to start to determine what you should do next. So, hey, get a list of everything you've lost so far this year and everything you've won so far this year, or if your sales cycle is longer than in the last 24 months, whatever, because I know some of you have really long sales cycles out there. I deal with them all the time. So take a look at the last two years of what you won and what you lost. Take a look at the dollar values, because as the senior executives get involved, the dollar values creep up higher, which is what we want, right? It also increases the lifetime value of the customer when the senior executives are involved. Now, that is just my own personal research speaking there, but I'm pretty sure that that would pan out if we did some real research. So if the CEO says, look, as a senior leader in this company, we expect you to spend a certain amount of time with the salespeople, but not willy-nilly. We're going to train them on what to do, how to use you. They're going to prepare you. We're going to learn how to toss the ball Boom. So don't be afraid, right, they will not waste your time. I promise you our sellers will not waste your time. They will only use you when it's appropriate.
Speaker 2:Right now, let's measure right. But we can start by doing that win-loss review and go oh my gosh, look at the last four things we won that were over a million dollars. There were senior executives involved, interesting so that can be your basis for why you want them to do it. Look, the proof is in the pudding right here. We won these deals because you guys were involved. So we're going to do more of that. We're going to increase our win rate and we're going to increase our average deal size by having senior executives involved. So that's what you're going to commit to. We're going to commit to the process for doing it, so we don't waste your time, and then we're going to measure to see if it works. Did our close ratio continue to increase? Did our average deal size continue to increase? Did our sales cycle shorten because we involved more people and not just senior executives? It could be your subject matter experts. Like we said, there's lots of different people who can be involved and help. But yeah, measure it Absolutely.
Speaker 1:How do you keep one of the salespeople from getting too much executive attention?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that's where the sales leader comes in. It's part of their job to regulate that.
Speaker 1:I once knew this guy and everybody celebrated him as the best salesperson. And then one of the other salespeople ran a report and it showed that he had four times more sales engineering time than anybody else in the company and he was closing like twice as much as the second place person. So they're like, yeah, he's selling a lot, but he's also using way more resources than anyone else.
Speaker 2:But that might be fine, because he's done sizes. We're bigger, right. Maybe we everybody should have some more engineering help. That's what I would say. And if he was winning those deals where engineers were there, that tells us something. Now, does that make the cost of sale go up a little bit? Yes, but what's the lifetime value of the customer?
Speaker 1:So that's the thing to look at, right. So is the cost of sale? Is the lifetime value of the customer in line with what we expect, or are we taking all of our executives offline? We're chasing down these deals because somebody's getting a politic and getting them involved. Right, exactly Because there's always that person that brings the cookies or brings the barbecue or milk, but that's the sales leader's job right.
Speaker 2:The sales leader needs to temper that. So if you've got six or eight people reporting to you and one of them is hogging all the resources, then you have to do something about it. That's your job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so keep an eye on that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1:So with the, we've got a range of things that we can do. We can do a 30-second video, we can get on a plane to go see somebody.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's a big commitment, but at the same time, some people, especially folks in the Midwest, like to do business with people that they're shaking hands with. What's the trend look like these days? Are people in the prospect organizations okay with remote meetings, when a lot of times in the past they'd want somebody to come in their office, sit in the conference room, shake their hand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a tough one because it's a bit of a mixed bag, but for the most part I'm finding with all of my clients. Right now I have about eight clients. They all have a business to business complex sale. Their businesses are all between 20 and 100 million. They all sell something very technical. Their customers are big companies and they do seem to want to see people.
Speaker 2:So they're meeting up at conferences and having an evening together or a day ahead or a day after, and I think what's a little bit different is they're trying to tie their in-person visits in with something else, not just I'll fly to meet you for an hour and fly back. I think those days are pretty much gone, but people do seem to want to meet in person, but they're kind of bundle it. So if we're all going to this conference, then let's make sure we get together during this conference and have some time to have these kinds of meetings, versus just fly out just for one meeting. The other thing I'm seeing and encouraging is okay, you're going to go into a territory, just stay there for five or eight days and go see all the people that you need to see, set those meetings up as best as possible, and so I think we're being more economical with our in-person time and I think that's a very good thing. But I do think people want it and I think it's just good to ask, right?
Speaker 2:But I think in some of these cases where deals aren't closing, it's like get on a plane. What are you doing? Go talk to these people. I mean, come on, these are big deals. I mean, at least the deals my clients deal with. There's nothing smaller than $50,000 and most of the deals are $500 or a million and lifetime value is probably $5 or $8 or $10 million. So what are you doing? Saving money? No, get on a plane. No, not saving money.
Speaker 1:Get on a plane, get the BDRs put something together, get field marketing through an event, and then all of a sudden, you've got that city.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. You're going to be there anyway. So now do an event and get some other people there. Helping your own customers network with each other is a great thing. So have a little cocktail, or invite all the CEOs or all of engineering or for several different companies, and pull them together, and some prospects too. So just make more out of each trip. That's what I would say, but it's still very valuable to get out in person.
Speaker 1:Love it, Alice. This has been great how to position executives when working deals. Anything else you want to add? Anything you want to plug?
Speaker 2:today. Oh my gosh, just do it. Just get out there and try it, but message me if you have trouble. I'm on LinkedIn pretty easy to get to that way and I'd love for everyone to listen to my podcast, which is sales talk for CEOs. And even though I talk to CEOs about how they built their sales and I want CEOs to listen, it's also for everyone who supports CEOs.
Speaker 1:Get in their brain, understand what they're thinking about.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:What a great opportunity. Thank you for all that you do, putting that great content out there. This is the sales management podcast. If you want to check out a free version of Coach CRM, go to coachcrmcom. I'm Corey Bray. We'll see you next time.